phyllo wrote:There is the question of what is wrong with comfort and consolation?

He treats them as artificial states produced by psychological defense mechanisms rather than as normal products of life and thought.

One is supposed to be miserable?

That you actually [still] imagine that this is what is really behind my posting here speaks, say, volumes?

Comfort and consolation per se isn't my point.

It is the extent to which others insist that what comforts and consoles them can comfort and console you too --- if only you'll think about one or another set of conflicting goods and/or God as they do.

Not counting those objectivists [ubermen] here who insist that, say, only white anglo-saxon, protestant and heterosexual men even deserve to be comforted and consoled.

I always focus the beam on the fact that I -- "I" -- no longer have access to this comfort and consolation. Neither on this side of the grave nor on the other side of it.

And all I can do is to explore the reasons that others give to explain why they still do have access to them.

The rest is just polemics and waiting for godot.

He was like a man who wanted to change all; and could not; so burned with his impotence; and had only me, an infinitely small microcosm to convert or detest. John Fowles

The hole as You express is very understandable from the point of viewthat has generally been expressed all through out our / Your experience .

But that hole is not a singular manifestation of being (there), but a built (here) , where it (the experience) of Being has a beginning.

The point Heidegger makes is that the Being can not be approached as if, through It's self, the whole self, as a composite of psychological , philosophical, metapsychologocal, political origin, because it has to be looked at from the different vantage points.

But we can't because trying to find it is only possible by going back and finding the original experience of the hole.

The 'hole' , Lamb, has manyform derivations. of mostly symbolic forms taken , would You go along with that?That the Platonic Cave, and Nietzsche's Abyss have some semblance relevant to experience in general. Then the the hole You inhabit share somewhat of a re-semblance.

The etymology of the word between semblance and resemblance occasions two different forms of 'appearing different'. Not that I'm with this kind of analysis for my basic effort of proof, only to dole out defenses toward such people who find such proof definitive. (And you know whom I'm referring)

That connecting types of holes by virtue of an imposed temporal referentially is am arduous and nay oft impossible task, and it is not based simply on current, not exclusive definition.

It is alive, in the sense temporality more in line with what Augustine defines time as being transcendence.

So yea, it is am existential contraption , but one with transcendental undertones of time as understood to before bound to a backward understanding them a forward look.

So the contraption is there and it isn't.The duality has disappeared but understandably so, because of the inherent duality within time itself.

This is the conflict which binds us onto a hole from which we are trying to escape.

We would like to get away from time, as some modern historians claim unsuccessfully so, that we are living , having passed the age of history.

But it may not be so simple to escape it, nonetheless, the constraints, which the totality pdntje darkness of the hole(whole) has imprinted by Aristotle has imprinted am Greco-Romans. We live by

Right.

Clarification as just another [bigger] wall of words defining and defending other words. An intellectual contraption of steroids.

Really, imagine someone struggling at the intersection of identity, value judgment and political economy. They are struggling existentially to answer the question "how ought I to live?"

In other words, given that they are faced "out in a particular world" with a tumultuous clash of moral and political narratives/agendas. It could be anything from abortion to keeping animals in zoos.

They read your assessment and....and what?

He was like a man who wanted to change all; and could not; so burned with his impotence; and had only me, an infinitely small microcosm to convert or detest. John Fowles

The hole as You express is very understandable from the point of viewthat has generally been expressed all through out our / Your experience .

But that hole is not a singular manifestation of being (there), but a built (here) , where it (the experience) of Being has a beginning.

The point Heidegger makes is that the Being can not be approached as if, through It's self, the whole self, as a composite of psychological , philosophical, metapsychologocal, political origin, because it has to be looked at from the different vantage points.

But we can't because trying to find it is only possible by going back and finding the original experience of the hole.

The 'hole' , Lamb, has manyform derivations. of mostly symbolic forms taken , would You go along with that?That the Platonic Cave, and Nietzsche's Abyss have some semblance relevant to experience in general. Then the the hole You inhabit share somewhat of a re-semblance.

The etymology of the word between semblance and resemblance occasions two different forms of 'appearing different'. Not that I'm with this kind of analysis for my basic effort of proof, only to dole out defenses toward such people who find such proof definitive. (And you know whom I'm referring)

That connecting types of holes by virtue of an imposed temporal referentially is am arduous and nay oft impossible task, and it is not based simply on current, not exclusive definition.

It is alive, in the sense temporality more in line with what Augustine defines time as being transcendence.

So yea, it is am existential contraption , but one with transcendental undertones of time as understood to before bound to a backward understanding them a forward look.

So the contraption is there and it isn't.The duality has disappeared but understandably so, because of the inherent duality within time itself.

This is the conflict which binds us onto a hole from which we are trying to escape.

We would like to get away from time, as some modern historians claim unsuccessfully so, that we are living , having passed the age of history.

But it may not be so simple to escape it, nonetheless, the constraints, which the totality pdntje darkness of the hole(whole) has imprinted by Aristotle has imprinted am Greco-Romans. We live by

Right.

Clarification as just another [bigger] wall of words defining and defending other words. An intellectual contraption of steroids.

Really, imagine someone struggling at the intersection of identity, value judgment and political economy. They are struggling existentially to answer the question "how ought I to live?"

In other words, given that they are faced "out in a particular world" with a tumultuous clash of moral and political narratives/agendas. It could be anything from abortion to keeping animals in zoos.

They read your assessment and....and what?[/quote

Then , like I likewise, would and do, feel existentially defeated, and adhere to an earlier sign posted there: Beware those, who enter here!

I can no possibly give up on getting out of the I (eye) , whereby my values and my confusions would condemn me , in a metaphorical Altona.

But as I'm completely on that as for me, I cannot get over an existential leap i have made recently to transfer the angst in form of a totality of hope.

Situations give rise to conflicting values as well, and in cases like that, choices can drive one literally to the wall, from which there actually may not be an exit.

I will describe somewhat a situation to follow that personally is causing me similar state of impotence.

I've been looking for a job for some time now, for my familie's financial needs grossly acceed my capacity to satisfy them.

I took a job offer about a couple of months ago, and I was fired from lack of telling them, that my recent operation would disqualify me from the job, as designated in their employment manual.

Actually , it was a joint decision by my employer and me.

So now I was left with not only a diminished income, but time , which would have been better spent.

So just today, I get a call from another interested employer in Santa Ana, .ca. and they indicated a far better paying training paid opportunity at twice the salary and a lucrative sign in bonus.

Well, then I suddenly remembered that my wife and I have purchesed6 tickets for a return visit to Hungary, my birthplace.The shock of that remembrance knocked the wind out of me for, this would have been an ideal position , if it had worked out.

So feeling trapped, I asked them if the starting date could be adjusted to coincide after the 10 some days that our visit would have taken.

The answer was a flat out , resounding 'NO', and with nothing to drink, a total exasperation came over me. Now this 'real' hole, not constracted, seems to bottom out into a myriad of valuelessness, leaving me in an existential lurch, from which escape appears impossible for the moment.

I an particularising for a deeper meaning here, that it appeared for me. that I'm not in a situation, but its derivative : a state.So here it is: my psycholigism or lack of psycho-holism devolved into a feeling state, because I couldn't dis-associate it from the overall situation as a whole.

Abortion is much more dramatic , but not as prevalent as finding, holding and looking losing a job. It's a strange anomaly.

Too many people are having kids who can't afford it, but no one is much concerned about what is really behind a guy's problems concerning how problematic it is morally speaking, on those whose lives were shattered by losing job, wife and kids , health and meaning and desire to live. That category includes the irresponsible good ol' union busters.

Not to mention kids having to grow up fatherless and in many cases adopted out to abusive people who are only running these businesses out of greed.

phyllo wrote:There is the question of what is wrong with comfort and consolation?

He treats them as artificial states produced by psychological defense mechanisms rather than as normal products of life and thought.

One is supposed to be miserable?

That you actually [still] imagine that this is what is really behind my posting here speaks, say, volumes?

Comfort and consolation per se isn't my point.

It is the extent to which others insist that what comforts and consoles them can comfort and console you too --- if only you'll think about one or another set of conflicting goods and/or God as they do.

Not counting those objectivists [ubermen] here who insist that, say, only white anglo-saxon, protestant and heterosexual men even deserve to be comforted and consoled.

I always focus the beam on the fact that I -- "I" -- no longer have access to this comfort and consolation. Neither on this side of the grave nor on the other side of it.

And all I can do is to explore the reasons that others give to explain why they still do have access to them.

The rest is just polemics and waiting for godot.

My point is that not everything is a "psychological defense mechanism'. Not everything is an "existential contraption".

It's important to examine when something is a "defense mechanism" and when it is not... instead of pointlessly dumping it all into one category.

And please don't respond with "the distinction between facts that can be shown to be true for all of us", because you don't apply that distinction consistently. That's my biggest problem with your reaction to my statements about communism ... as soon as it suits you, facts and truth get tossed out and they are replaced by personal reactions.

It appears that truth is essentially worthless. Why even pretend to be interested in truth?

iambiguous wrote:That you actually [still] imagine that this is what is really behind my posting here speaks, say, volumes?

Comfort and consolation per se isn't my point.

Then drop it. The drama of your losing objectivism and all the implicit judgments of objectivists, intended or not, are not then relevent. Focus just on the epistemological issue. You can't fling around judgments of other people's internal processes when compared with you own and not expect people to interpret you the way they do.

You claim to have a goal of understanding how they can be certain of specific values and goods. Fine, that is an episemological issue. All the comfort and consolation - terms you use and bring up yourself - is ad hom and irrelevent. All you need to do is focus on

how do you now that?

Period.

It comes off so disingenous when you get up in arms that someone has attributed motives to you when you regularly do this yourself AND it is not necessary for your project.

And here, when I tell you abotu your project, I am going by your own description of your goals.

I always focus the beam on the fact that I -- "I" -- no longer have access to this comfort and consolation. Neither on this side of the grave nor on the other side of it.

Sure, you do this, but you also make ad hom psychic claims about the motivations of people you disagree with. It is not necessary to speak about your emotional situation. It is not necessary to speculate about theirs. It causes problems when you compare and contrast and it is even less necessary. That you do this implicitly allows you to feel victimized when others react to all this focus on motivations and emotion which is to the man and not relevent to your purported goals.

And all I can do is to explore the reasons that others give to explain why they still do have access to them.

But that is not all you do do! That would be great, just focus on the reasons and drop all the psychology, comparisons, mind reading....

Just focus on the issue of how they know.

Can you do that?

Can you drop the implicit and explicit personal comparisons, the ad hom content?

You seem to get upset when people notice it and respond to it, when they return the favor.

Just drop it.

Be more Socrates like. How did you draw that conclusion? How do you know? How does that demonstrate that this value is correct?

You keep referring to I, then 'I'. Drop both out of this. The irony that there is so much of your I in your posts is part of what is causing you problems.

Just focus on the issue of who people get certain about their moral beliefs. That is a questioning process.

But if the issue is you and your feelings and that is what the discussion should be about, along with your ideas about what is going on in objectivists and their feelings and motivations....

if that is the discussion you want to have, fine.

Have that discussion. But 1) it will get in the way of the other conversation and 2) it will not speak volumes about anything when people say stuff about you, mind read about you, compare your motivations with others. It will simply be a natural outcome of what you are focusing on.

Now this suggestion will not eliminate conflict, but I would bet heavily it will reduce it. I don't think it will provide you with a solution, since I don't think there is one. However if there were a solution to conflicting goods, this streamlining opens the door for the discussion that would lead to it. Precise questioning leaving your biography and other people's motives and emotions OUT OF IT.

IOW a philosophical discussion.

I do think that one's personal life can be a part of philosophy discussions, but here your goal is so precise and the inevitability of the distraction coupled with its utter lack of usefulness in this issue, lead me to suggest you just leave it out.

Meno_ wrote:I've been looking for a job for some time now, for my familie's financial needs grossly acceed my capacity to satisfy them.

I took a job offer about a couple of months ago, and I was fired from lack of telling them, that my recent operation would disqualify me from the job, as designated in their employment manual.

Actually , it was a joint decision by my employer and me.

So now I was left with not only a diminished income, but time , which would have been better spent.

So just today, I get a call from another interested employer in Santa Ana, .ca. and they indicated a far better paying training paid opportunity at twice the salary and a lucrative sign in bonus.

Well, then I suddenly remembered that my wife and I have purchesed6 tickets for a return visit to Hungary, my birthplace.The shock of that remembrance knocked the wind out of me for, this would have been an ideal position , if it had worked out.

So feeling trapped, I asked them if the starting date could be adjusted to coincide after the 10 some days that our visit would have taken.

The answer was a flat out , resounding 'NO', and with nothing to drink, a total exasperation came over me. Now this 'real' hole, not constracted, seems to bottom out into a myriad of valuelessness, leaving me in an existential lurch, from which escape appears impossible for the moment.

I an particularising for a deeper meaning here, that it appeared for me. that I'm not in a situation, but its derivative : a state.So here it is: my psycholigism or lack of psycho-holism devolved into a feeling state, because I couldn't dis-associate it from the overall situation as a whole.

Literally I fell into a whole-less hole, like Alice did.

I think this is a good metaphore into what Heidegger meant.

Yes, there are any number of existential holes just like this. Holes that any number of us here could recount.

Sets of circumstances entirely unique to us. "Situations" that are bursting at the seams with all manner of complex variables that we will only have so much understanding and control over.

What then is to be done?

For example:

1] Why will we choose to do some things and not other things? And why will others choose to do the things that we choose not to do instead?

2] How do we go about determining the most rational things to do?

3] How might those folks we call "philosophers" examine the context in order to come up with that which can be described as the "right thing to do"?

What would constitute, say, "justice" here?

Now, my own philosophical hole comes into play here in suggesting there are limits beyond which the tools of philosophy may well not be able to go.

In many profound and problematic ways, "I" here is just an "existential contraption". A particular prefabricated and ever refabricated "sense of self" predisposed subjectively out in a particular world understood in a particular way by the existential trajectory of the life that has actually been lived.

So, it would seem [to me] the best that we can hope for here is to at least come to an agreement regarding those things -- facts --able to be demonstrated as true for all of us.

And then "for all practical purposes" our reaction to those agreed upon facts will precipitate choices [behaviors] that gravitate toward one or another combination of might makes right, right makes might, or moderation, negotiation and compromise.

The best of all possible worlds given what we construe to be [here and now] the best of all possible ways to think about that.

He was like a man who wanted to change all; and could not; so burned with his impotence; and had only me, an infinitely small microcosm to convert or detest. John Fowles

phyllo wrote: My point is that not everything is a "psychological defense mechanism'. Not everything is an "existential contraption".

It's important to examine when something is a "defense mechanism" and when it is not... instead of pointlessly dumping it all into one category.

The implication being that to me everything is. And yet over and over and over and over and over again I note how the vast preponderance of human interactions revolve entirely around sustained material relationships embedded -- immutably? -- in mathematical and scientific truths, in nature, in empirical fact, in the logical rules of language.

No, the "existential contraptions" and the "psychological defense mechanisms" revolve instead only around our reactions to conflicting goods. Why any particular "I" goes in one direction here and not another. And how that gets all tangled up in genes and memes and Gods and politics.

phyllo wrote: And please don't respond with "the distinction between facts that can be shown to be true for all of us", because you don't apply that distinction consistently. That's my biggest problem with your reaction to my statements about communism ... as soon as it suits you, facts and truth get tossed out and they are replaced by personal reactions.

Right, and as soon as it suits you, the alleged facts and truths coming from those who still embrace Communism -- Communism done right this time -- get tossed out in turn.

The distinction here will only ever be applied "consistently" when others who don't think like you do admit that their own value judgments really are just inherently flawed "personal reactions" out of sync with the "whole truth" about Communism.

phyllo wrote: It appears that truth is essentially worthless. Why even pretend to be interested in truth?

There are truths that seem clearly embedded in the either/or world.

But in a No God world what does it mean even to speak of these truths as "essential"?

If next month an asteroid -- the Big One -- plows into the planet, every single one of us might be obliterated. What human truths then would not become essentially worthless?

He was like a man who wanted to change all; and could not; so burned with his impotence; and had only me, an infinitely small microcosm to convert or detest. John Fowles

And yet over and over and over and over and over again I note how the vast preponderance of human interactions revolve entirely around sustained material relationships embedded -- immutably? -- in mathematical and scientific truths, in nature, in empirical fact, in the logical rules of language.

Yes, we all know that because you have posted it hundreds of times.

No, No, the "existential contraptions" and the "psychological defense mechanisms" revolve instead only around our reactions to conflicting goods. Why any particular "I" goes in one direction here and not another. And how that gets all tangled up in genes and memes and Gods and politics. Why any particular "I" goes in one direction here and not another. And how that gets all tangled up in genes and memes and Gods and politics.

No shit. That's what we were discussing. As usual.

Do we really need to put a disclaimer in every post :"The "existential contraptions" and the "psychological defense mechanisms" revolve instead only around our reactions to conflicting goods."

Right, and as soon as it suits you, the alleged facts and truths coming from those who still embrace Communism -- Communism done right this time -- get tossed out in turn.

The distinction here will only ever be applied "consistently" when others who don't think like you do admit that their own value judgments really are just inherently flawed "personal reactions" out of sync with the "whole truth" about Communism.

That's a product of your imagination. It's not based on anything that I have written.

Another obstacle to having a discussion with you.

If next month an asteroid -- the Big One -- plows into the planet, every single one of us might be obliterated. What human truths then would not become essentially worthless?

You're alive now and the truth is valuable now. Next month, next minute or a billion years from now ... are all irrelevant in the present.

PS

"The "existential contraptions" and the "psychological defense mechanisms" revolve instead only around our reactions to conflicting goods."

iambiguous wrote:That you actually [still] imagine that this is what is really behind my posting here speaks, say, volumes?

Comfort and consolation per se isn't my point.

Then drop it. The drama of your losing objectivism and all the implicit judgments of objectivists, intended or not, are not then relevent. Focus just on the epistemological issue. You can't fling around judgments of other people's internal processes when compared with you own and not expect people to interpret you the way they do.

Right. The "epistemological issue".

Just focus the beam on a moral and political context in which conflicts are rife. How would we actually go about examining these conflicts as an "epistemological issue"? What can we know for certain such that "interpretation" is not really a factor. There is only what is in fact known to be true and what is in fact known to be not true.

Comfort and consolation here would seem to revolve basically around the fact that everyone is able to at least agree on the facts.

Where the discomfort and disconsolation pop up is [of course] in our reactions to the behaviors that some choose given their own understanding of the facts regarding things like abortion.

Objectivists and some pragmatists/realists have managed to attain and then sustain a level of psychological comfort and consolation that is now [more or less] beyond my reach. They have managed to sustain an "I" that, in the is/ought world, seems considerably less fractured and fragmentd than mine.

And if I bring that up over and again on threads like this one, it is precisely because for me nothing is more relevant with regard to philosophy.

So, sure, if that isn't of real concern to others, they should certainly steer clear of me here.

But: For those who do choose to interact with others socially, politically and economically, there's no getting around conflicting goods.

Now, indeed, in terms of how we discuss this philosophically there are any number of technical conponents that revolve around that which we either can or cannot know for certain.

And, for the epistemologists among us, I ask that they bring these technical points out into the world of conflicting goods.

Instead, any number of them will insist that only when I go up into the technical clouds and demonstrate my understanding of these things as a "serious philosopher", is it worth their while to bring their far more sophisticated analytical contraptions down to earth.

So, we're stuck.

Now, I'm not saying they don't make a good point about me. I'm just asking them to demonstrate that point by bringing their technical skills to bear on a particular context in which they are confronting actual flesh and blood folks on opposite sides of one or another moral and political conflagration.

Karpel Tunnel wrote: You claim to have a goal of understanding how they can be certain of specific values and goods. Fine, that is an episemological issue. All the comfort and consolation - terms you use and bring up yourself - is ad hom and irrelevent. All you need to do is focus on how do you now that?

Again, an issue like abortion. Discuss the "goal of understanding" the "specific values and goals" embedded in this particularly ferocious conflicting good...as an epistemologist might. What would she be telling those folks outside the abortion clinic who are hurling insults and spit -- and bullets? -- at each other?

I always focus the beam on the fact that I -- "I" -- no longer have access to this comfort and consolation. Neither on this side of the grave nor on the other side of it.

Karpel Tunnel wrote: Sure, you do this, but you also make ad hom psychic claims about the motivations of people you disagree with.

Cite an example of this. I don't see my reaction as anything other than probing into how others rationalize their own thoughts and feelings and behaviors in conflicts with others.

Such that they do not construe "I" then as being down in the hole that my "I" is in. That they do not see "I" then as a fractured and fragmented existential contraption.

If some wish to construe this as an example of an "ad hom psychic claim", so be it.

And all I can do is to explore the reasons that others give to explain why they still do have access to them.

Karpel Tunnel wrote: But that is not all you do do! That would be great, just focus on the reasons and drop all the psychology, comparisons, mind reading....

Just focus on the issue of how they know.

Can you do that?

More to the point [mine] will they? Over and again I ask others to situate their value judgments "here and now" in an existential trajectory along the lines of this:

1] I was raised in the belly of the working class beast. My family/community were very conservative. Abortion was a sin. 2] I was drafted into the Army and while on my "tour of duty" in Vietnam I happened upon politically radical folks who reconfigured my thinking about abortion. And God and lots of other things.3] after I left the Army, I enrolled in college and became further involved in left wing politics. It was all the rage back then. I became a feminist. I married a feminist. I wholeheartedly embraced a woman's right to choose.4] then came the calamity with Mary and John. I loved them both but their engagement was foundering on the rocks that was Mary's choice to abort their unborn baby. 5] back and forth we all went. I supported Mary but I could understand the points that John was making. I could understand the arguments being made on both sides. John was right from his side and Mary was right from hers.6] I read William Barrett's Irrational Man and came upon his conjectures regarding "rival goods".7] Then, over time, I abandoned an objectivist frame of mind that revolved around Marxism/feminism. Instead, I became more and more embedded in existentialism. And then as more years passed I became an advocate for moral nihilism.

But how many of them do? To do so [in my view] involves the very real risk of upending the "real me" in sync with the "right thing to do". And it is this [in my view] that prompts any number of hostile reactions to the arguments I make.

All I need do here is to go back to the time when my own I out in the is/ought began to reconfigure/crumble into "I".

Yeah, I may be wrong here but it may well be this that triggers the angriest reactions to me. That may well be the source of my "conflicts" with others. My whole frame of mind is about yanking the "real me" and "the right thing to do" out from under the objectivists.

And once they are gone...then what?

He was like a man who wanted to change all; and could not; so burned with his impotence; and had only me, an infinitely small microcosm to convert or detest. John Fowles

iambiguous wrote:That you actually [still] imagine that this is what is really behind my posting here speaks, say, volumes?

Comfort and consolation per se isn't my point.

Then drop it. The drama of your losing objectivism and all the implicit judgments of objectivists, intended or not, are not then relevent. Focus just on the epistemological issue. You can't fling around judgments of other people's internal processes when compared with you own and not expect people to interpret you the way they do.[/quote]

Right. The "epistemological issue".

What an odd way to put it. Yes, you have an epistemological issue. You wonder how others and if others can know what is good and demonstrate this. Your core issue, as presented by you, is an epistemological one.

Just focus the beam on a moral and political context in which conflicts are rife. How would we actually go about examining these conflicts as an "epistemological issue"?

Exactly the way you sometimes do. You ask people how they know that their idea of the good is the right one. You ask them to demonstrate this to others and to you. That is a set of epistemological issues. It can be specific: give an example, such as the abortion one. It could be general. I have seen you post in both ways and as parts of many posts. My point was that you add in stuff that will distract from what you claim is the project you have here.

Where the discomfort and disconsolation pop up is [of course] in our reactions to the behaviors that some choose given their own understanding of the facts regarding things like abortion.

Sure, they do. But you need not discuss those emotions or states of mind. You can focus on the issue of how they know they are right and how they can demonstrate this to others. It can all be very specific, but there is no need to discuss what you think their state of mind is.

If you also want to speculate on that, you could do it elsewhere. It is certainly a valid and interesting topic. But here it comes off as smug and condescending. And it is basically ad hom. You believe that because it brings you comfort. That is an ad hom.

Objectivists and some pragmatists/realists have managed to attain and then sustain a level of psychological comfort and consolation that is now [more or less] beyond my reach. They have managed to sustain an "I" that, in the is/ought world, seems considerably less fractured and fragmentd than mine.

Could be in some or many cases. Fine. But it is not relevent and not a help in finding out ways to resolve conflicting goods. Repeating it is a good way to put people on the defensive, since it is an ad hom attack in this context.

And if I bring that up over and again on threads like this one, it is precisely because for me nothing is more relevant with regard to philosophy.

It is not relevant to finding out if there is an answer to conflicting goods. And you don't like it when people do it to you and you go off topic when they do.

So, sure, if that isn't of real concern to others, they should certainly steer clear of me here.

Whether it - the internal emotional states of objectivists or non-objectivists - is a concern to others does not matter. Even if it is, and it often is, it is not relevent to the project you have claimed you are about here.

But: For those who do choose to interact with others socially, politically and economically, there's no getting around conflicting goods.

See: right there you acted as if to discuss resolving issues of conflicting goods you must talk about the emotional states of other people and compare them with you states. That we need to know about your hole and what you have felt at other times in your life.

But no, that does not help resolve the issue of conflicting goods. It is ad hom, a way to seem, at the very least, condescending, to make it about you and them, rather than the issue of conflicting goods and how to know what is good and how one should live and how one determines that. IOW it creates distractions from what you have repeatedly claimed is you goal for these topics.

Now, indeed, in terms of how we discuss this philosophically there are any number of technical conponents that revolve around that which we either can or cannot know for certain.

And, for the epistemologists among us, I ask that they bring these technical points out into the world of conflicting goods.

You know what, fuck you. You are an epistemologist as much as anyone here. You have an epistemological quandry. You like to mention it as a hole. But this hole revolves around you no longer feeling certain or even thinking it is possible to know the good and demonstrate it. That's epistemology. Here you are again labeling other people.

Instead, any number of them will insist that only when I go up into the technical clouds and demonstrate my understanding of these things as a "serious philosopher", is it worth their while to bring their far more sophisticated analytical contraptions down to earth.

Fuck you, you asshole. That is not what I am saying. Only the most pigheaded uncharitable read of my posts would come up with that shit.

Where, in my fucking posts, did I myself go up in the technical clouds or ask for serious philosophy you fucked up little turd. I mentioned Socrates,that's the closest I can think of. What did he do, he kept asking questions,and not in technical language, in everyday language. Fuck, you've had more academic philosophy than I have, according to what you wrote elsewhere. I took a couple of courses at a weird progressive college with minimal reading.

I said drop the personal stuff, the comparing yourself to others, the condescending shit, the mind reading. Pardon my use of all that technical jargon.

You judgmental little moralizing dick.

It was a practical suggestion related directly to what you say your goals are and what I see as interfering with that goal.

At no point do you even respond to what I said.

No I have to talk about their internal emotional states because....

And now this expecting you to perhaps actually respond to my suggestion will somehow be seen as academic.

What were my suggestions: hm. Ask people how they know this. Ask people how they can demosntrate this for others.

It's me demanding a paper in symbolic logic.

So, we're stuck.

Now, I'm not saying they don't make a good point about me. I'm just asking them to demonstrate that point by bringing their technical skills to bear on a particular context in which they are confronting actual flesh and blood folks on opposite sides of one or another moral and political conflagration.

You just keep spitting in faces.

My 'technical' skill was not philosophical, it was interpersonal. I saw you react to someone else commenting on your emotional states, the affront. I point this out and then suggest that your project is ill-served by having emotional states and ad hom and reading others and comparing yourself to others present in a discussion.

At no fucking point did I say you needed to move in any academic direction. I suggested you drop the personal stuff, keep the other.

Again, an issue like abortion. Discuss the "goal of understanding" the "specific values and goals" embedded in this particularly ferocious conflicting good...as an epistemologist might. What would she be telling those folks outside the abortion clinic who are hurling insults and spit -- and bullets? -- at each other?

YOu fucking cunt.

She would ask people on both sides how they know they are right. Just like you do. The problem is you want the psychoanalyze, you want to parade your hole, you want to compare your personalities...

What an utterly irrelevent question or challenge this was. It was as if I said an academic epistemologist would solve the problem. Lunacy. I have made it clear I don't think there is objective good. I gave a fairly simple practical suggestion about what is making your threads more muddy and off topic. That's it.

If some wish to construe this as an example of an "ad hom psychic claim", so be it.

Thank you for citing an example yourself. They abound.

More to the point [mine] will they?

Right, your behavior is not the point, even though we interact with you. Their behavior is more to the point. Everyone's behavior matters, yours theirs mine. But the goal, as you have presented it, is to see if anyone can solve conflicting goods AND THAT FUCKING DISCUSSION IS NOT AIDED BY your discussions of your hole, their feelings, your feelings, how theri feelings contrast with your feelings and all the judgments around who is braver or facing the hole etc. That's noise int he way of signal.

1] I was raised in the belly of the working class beast. My family/community were very conservative. Abortion was a sin. 2] I was drafted into the Army and while on my "tour of duty" in Vietnam I happened upon politically radical folks who reconfigured my thinking about abortion. And God and lots of other things.3] after I left the Army, I enrolled in college and became further involved in left wing politics. It was all the rage back then. I became a feminist. I married a feminist. I wholeheartedly embraced a woman's right to choose.4] then came the calamity with Mary and John. I loved them both but their engagement was foundering on the rocks that was Mary's choice to abort their unborn baby. 5] back and forth we all went. I supported Mary but I could understand the points that John was making. I could understand the arguments being made on both sides. John was right from his side and Mary was right from hers.6] I read William Barrett's Irrational Man and came upon his conjectures regarding "rival goods".7] Then, over time, I abandoned an objectivist frame of mind that revolved around Marxism/feminism. Instead, I became more and more embedded in existentialism. And then as more years passed I became an advocate for moral nihilism.

You just farted. I mean, walked in and stuck your ass in my face and farted.

But how many of them do? To do so [in my view] involves the very real risk of upending the "real me" in sync with the "right thing to do". And it is this [in my view] that prompts any number of hostile reactions to the arguments I make.

And thank you for giving an example of a regular making the issue a contrasting personal one, where you come off as better and why and what their internal motivations are.

Yeah, I may be wrong here but it may well be this that triggers the angriest reactions to me.

[/quote]I don't give a fuck about finding objective goods or defending any. I am not threatened by their non-existence like many objectists are and like you are. What pissed me off here more than every before was how poorly you read me, how you misrepresented me, how you played the faux regular guy by calling out 'the epistemologists', how you deny something so obvious and then give a few examples of precisely what I am saying, how you spat on a practical suggestion

THAT HAD NOTHING IN THE FUCKING WORLD TO DO WITH BEING A 'SERIOUS PHILOSOPHER' OR WRITING SOME TECHINICAL PHILOSOPHY.

NARCISSIST FUCK.

Seriously you shitbag. You seemed to concede earlier that you might have missed something in our last exchange, but here you are just projecting the same tired shit on me and my post and completely misrepresenting it.

And yet over and over and over and over and over again I note how the vast preponderance of human interactions revolve entirely around sustained material relationships embedded -- immutably? -- in mathematical and scientific truths, in nature, in empirical fact, in the logical rules of language.

phyllo wrote: Yes, we all know that because you have posted it hundreds of times.

I do so only because I perceive others [time and again] as not truly recognizing the distinction that I do make between human interactions [the vast majority of them] not embedded in dasein, conflicting goods and political economy, and those [relatively few] interactions that seem [to me] to be.

But it's these "relatively few" interactions that precipitate [by far] the most conflict, the most pain and suffering, among the human species.

Thus this point:

...the "existential contraptions" and the "psychological defense mechanisms" revolve instead only around our reactions to conflicting goods. Why any particular "I" goes in one direction here and not another. And how that gets all tangled up in genes and memes and Gods and politics. Why any particular "I" goes in one direction here and not another. And how that gets all tangled up in genes and memes and Gods and politics.

phyllo wrote: No shit. That's what we were discussing. As usual.

Yes, but those folks that I describe as moral and political objectivists certainly seem to discuss these interactions quite a bit differently from those I describe as moral and political nihilists.

As for the "pragmatists" here who in turn shy away from "moral absolutes" themselves, I'm still unclear as to how they have managed to sustain what to me seems like a greater "peace of mind" regarding these things than I am able to garner.

Sure, perhaps, some can just "will" themselves into not being as bothered by this essentially meaningless conflict-ridden world that ends in oblivion as "I" am. But that too can never really be more [for me] than just another "existential contraption" rooted in dasein.

phyllo wrote: Do we really need to put a disclaimer in every post :"The "existential contraptions" and the "psychological defense mechanisms" revolve instead only around our reactions to conflicting goods."

You don't, I do. Why? Because it seems clear [to me] that many here still do not understand what I mean by them from "down in the hole" that I am. All I can do then is to explore how and why they are convinced that their own "I" here is not down in that hole with me.

Right, and as soon as it suits you, the alleged facts and truths coming from those who still embrace Communism -- Communism done right this time -- get tossed out in turn.

The distinction here will only ever be applied "consistently" when others who don't think like you do admit that their own value judgments really are just inherently flawed "personal reactions" out of sync with the "whole truth" about Communism.

phyllo wrote: That's a product of your imagination. It's not based on anything that I have written.

Come on, for all practical puroposes, you are either telling others that their understanding of Communism is incorrect if it is not in sync with yours, or you are acknowledging that with respect to value judgments like this, "I'm right from my side and you're right from your side."

How is that not applicable to you?

If next month an asteroid -- the Big One -- plows into the planet, every single one of us might be obliterated. What human truths then would not become essentially worthless?

phyllo wrote: You're alive now and the truth is valuable now. Next month, next minute or a billion years from now ... are all irrelevant in the present.

Your truth in other words. And even though you will be dead and gone someday, you have managed to think yourself in believing that your truths "here and now" are all that really matters.

Well, good for you. If that allows you some measure of "comfort and consolation" then that frame of mind "here and now" works for you. End of story. Yours.

It just doesn't work for me anymore.

So the question for philosophers then is this: Is there a way to determine which frame of mind here reflects that which all rational men and women are In fact obligated to share?

If they wish to be thought of as rational men and women.

Sure, that's possible.

Only "here and now" -- the present -- it's not something that "I" believe.

phyllo wrote: PS

"The "existential contraptions" and the "psychological defense mechanisms" revolve instead only around our reactions to conflicting goods."

...how would one go about describing the conflicted reactions to capitalism and socialism as anything other than "existential contraptions" rooted more or less in "psychological defense mechanisms" pertaining to any particular ego out in any particular world understood from any particular point of view?

How would you go about it?

He was like a man who wanted to change all; and could not; so burned with his impotence; and had only me, an infinitely small microcosm to convert or detest. John Fowles

What an odd way to put it. Yes, you have an epistemological issue. You wonder how others and if others can know what is good and demonstrate this. Your core issue, as presented by you, is an epistemological one.

More to the point [mine] is the manner in which I think that others think that they know what is good [morally] is something that I can demonstrate as the embodiment of [or as embodied in] the components of my own moral philosophy: dasein, conflicting goods, political economy.

No, I can't demonstrarte to others that what I think I know here is what they are obligated to think that they know in turn. You know, if they wish to be thought of as rational human beings.

Over and again I -- "I" -- include myself in the argument that I make: that value judgments [including my own] are existential contraptions once we move beyond that which can in fact be demonstrated as true objectively for all of us.

Then I propose that we take this "philosophical" discussion out into the world of actual conflicting goods and probe the extent to which we can in fact know what is either true or false when value judgments do come into conflict.

Just focus the beam on a moral and political context in which conflicts are rife. How would we actually go about examining these conflicts as an "epistemological issue"?

Karpel Tunnel wrote: Exactly the way you sometimes do. You ask people how they know that their idea of the good is the right one. You ask them to demonstrate this to others and to you. That is a set of epistemological issues. It can be specific: give an example, such as the abortion one. It could be general. I have seen you post in both ways and as parts of many posts. My point was that you add in stuff that will distract from what you claim is the project you have here.

Let's go to the dictionary:

Epistemology: the theory of knowledge, especially with regard to its methods, validity, and scope. Epistemology is the investigation of what distinguishes justified belief from opinion.

How then might we relate this to the conflicting goods that revolve around an issue like abortion?

How does a particular philosopher who has a particular "theory of knowledge" take that out into the world and embed it in her own particular moral/political narrative relating to abortion?

Using what particular "methods, validity, and scope" allows her to argue that her own knowledge transcends the manner in which I construe "I" here as embedded existentially in dasein, conflicting goods and political economy"?

How would their frame of mind not become entangled in this:

Where the discomfort and disconsolation pop up is [of course] in our reactions to the behaviors that some choose given their own understanding of the facts regarding things like abortion.

Karpel Tunnel wrote: Sure, they do. But you need not discuss those emotions or states of mind. You can focus on the issue of how they know they are right and how they can demonstrate this to others. It can all be very specific, but there is no need to discuss what you think their state of mind is.

How on earth do we discuss what we think we know about the morality of abortion without going this route? I must be misunderstanding your point. From my perspective the state of mind of those who oppose abortion is rooted in dasein in much the same manner as those who oppose denying women the right to choose an abortion.

What I am interested in then are those who address this: What can we know or not know here when the discussion shifts from abortion as a medical procedure to abortion as a moral conflict?

Karpel Tunnel wrote: If you also want to speculate on that, you could do it elsewhere. It is certainly a valid and interesting topic. But here it comes off as smug and condescending. And it is basically ad hom. You believe that because it brings you comfort. That is an ad hom.

So you say. Am I then allowed to demur? Because in fact I do. For all of the reasons I raised above. Then it comes down [as it always does here] to a tug of war between points of view.

Objectivists and some pragmatists/realists have managed to attain and then sustain a level of psychological comfort and consolation that is now [more or less] beyond my reach. They have managed to sustain an "I" that, in the is/ought world, seems considerably less fractured and fragmentd than mine.

Karpel Tunnel wrote: Could be in some or many cases. Fine. But it is not relevent and not a help in finding out ways to resolve conflicting goods. Repeating it is a good way to put people on the defensive, since it is an ad hom attack in this context.

Yet I maintain over and again that my own arguments here are no less an existential contraption. Sure, others can convince themselves that I really don't mean this; and that in yanking the discussion in a direction more suited to my own alleged motivations and intentions, I am engaging in an ad hom attack.

And, as I noted above, I can only speculate myself as to what is really behind my efforts here. Introspection here is always a slippery slope. Depending on the extent to which one believes that he or she really is in sync with the "real me".

Are you? Because "I" am certainly not. Not with respect to these enormously complex and convoluted existential relationships.

And if I bring that up over and again on threads like this one, it is precisely because for me nothing is more relevant with regard to philosophy.

Karpel Tunnel wrote: It is not relevant to finding out if there is an answer to conflicting goods. And you don't like it when people do it to you and you go off topic when they do.

Meaning what, that only the manner in which you have come to conclude an approach is "relevant" in resolving conflicting goods reflects the "correct" agenda of a philosopher? That only you get to say "what matters" here?

Cite an example of me "not liking it" when when others "do it to me". Do what specifically relating to what particular context?

But: For those who do choose to interact with others socially, politically and economically, there's no getting around conflicting goods.

Karpel Tunnel wrote: See: right there you acted as if to discuss resolving issues of conflicting goods you must talk about the emotional states of other people and compare them with you states. That we need to know about your hole and what you have felt at other times in your life.

Look, there are objectivists of Ayn Rand's ilk who insist that our emotional and psychological states can in fact be included in philosohical discussions of conflicting goods. Why? Because [they insist] there is not a single emotion or psychological reaction of theirs that they are not able to wholly subsume in their intellectual assumptions.

Me, I suspect it is all considerably more problematic than that. While we all come into world genetically predisposed to experience emotions, the manner in which each of us come to embody them in any particular context is no less an existential contraption to me. After all, the human brain intertwines both in ways that neurologists are just beginning to explore.

Note to others:

Below Karpel Tunnel jumps the shark. If that's the right expression. Suddenly he starts to get pissed off at me. He has laboriously attempted to enlighten me as to how a truly sophisticated thinker goes about broaching and then discussing/debating these complex relationships. But [as with so many others before him] I refuse to concede.

Now, indeed, in terms of how we discuss this philosophically there are any number of technical conponents that revolve around that which we either can or cannot know for certain.

And, for the epistemologists among us, I ask that they bring these technical points out into the world of conflicting goods.

Karpel Tunnel wrote: You know what, fuck you. You are an epistemologist as much as anyone here. You have an epistemological quandry. You like to mention it as a hole. But this hole revolves around you no longer feeling certain or even thinking it is possible to know the good and demonstrate it. That's epistemology. Here you are again labeling other people.

So, you label me as an "epistemologist". But we are to understand this accusation only in the manner in which you insist that all rational men and women are obligated to understand it. We must know it as you know it.

And if you insist that I don't think it is even possible to know the good and to demonstrate it then my attempts to explain that my own arguments here are no less an existential contraption is just me, what, lying to everyone?

It is as though with respect to an understanding of human value judgments in conflict you keep noting that 1 + 1 = 2, while I keep insisting that 1 + 1 = 3.

Instead, any number of them will insist that only when I go up into the technical clouds and demonstrate my understanding of these things as a "serious philosopher", is it worth their while to bring their far more sophisticated analytical contraptions down to earth.

Karpel Tunnel wrote: Fuck you, you asshole. That is not what I am saying. Only the most pigheaded uncharitable read of my posts would come up with that shit.

No, that is what I -- "I" -- think that "any number of" epistemologists attempt to do with me. But the only truly substantive manner in which I can understand their argments is if they are willing to take their "theories of knowledge" out into the world of conflicting goods that most of us here will be familiar with. Separate out the purely philosophical components of their assessment from the emotional and psychological reactions that they have in order to propose a brand new deontological assessment said to be the obligation of all rational men and women.

Karpel Tunnel wrote: Where, in my fucking posts, did I myself go up in the technical clouds or ask for serious philosophy you fucked up little turd. I mentioned Socrates,that's the closest I can think of. What did he do, he kept asking questions,and not in technical language, in everyday language. Fuck, you've had more academic philosophy than I have, according to what you wrote elsewhere. I took a couple of courses at a weird progressive college with minimal reading.

All I can do here is to grapple with the gap that I perceive between me being down in my hole [in the is/ought world] and the extent to which you do not perceive yourself as being down in one. The extent to which you feel less fractured and fragmented here than I do.

And in that regard you come off to me as just one more "intellectual" intent on focusing the discussion in the direction of "general descriptions" of human interactions that come into conflict over value judgments.

My reaction, however, is but one more "existential contraption" rooted in the manner in which "I" have to react to those discussions of this sort as the embodiment of dasein.

The sort of reactions that, surely, are far, far, far less frequent in discussions among folks like geologists or meteorologists or chemists or biologists or mathematicians.

Karpel Tunnel wrote: I said drop the personal stuff, the comparing yourself to others, the condescending shit, the mind reading. Pardon my use of all that technical jargon.

You judgmental little moralizing dick.

Wow, you've got me here right?!!

But: What prompts this sort of reaction? Again, I have my own suspicions.

Karpel Tunnel wrote: At no point do you even respond to what I said.

A common refrain here at ILP. When others do not respond to the points that you make as reasonable folks are expected to then they are clearly not understanding those points.

No doubt it is asserted because they are not even reading them.

Karpel Tunnel wrote: What were my suggestions: hm. Ask people how they know this. Ask people how they can demosntrate this for others.

What, by completely stripping the subjunctive components of our reactions to the world around us? Let's discuss "the right to bear arms" in America as only "serious philosophers" can?

Note to others:

Again, what am I missing here? What point is he making out at the intersection of identity, value judgments and political power that a proper "theory of knowledge" would address first.

Pure knowledge? Don't be saddened or frightened or enraged or confused or ambivlalent when the discussion gets around to your unwanted pregnancy. Figure out what you either can or cannot know about it and then come up with the least dysfunctional moral and political narrative/agenda.

So, we're stuck.

Now, I'm not saying they don't make a good point about me. I'm just asking them to demonstrate that point by bringing their technical skills to bear on a particular context in which they are confronting actual flesh and blood folks on opposite sides of one or another moral and political conflagration.

Karpel Tunnel wrote: You just keep spitting in faces.

Cite example of me spitting in your face here at ILP.

Note to Phyllo:

In our discussion of Communism, was I basically spitting in your face? Or, instead, was I suggesting that any particular inidvidual's reaction to it is likely to be embodied in dasein, conflicting goods and political economy?

Unless, of course, the epistemologists among us can in fact determine that which all rational men and women are obligated to know about it.

Karpel Tunnel wrote: My 'technical' skill was not philosophical, it was interpersonal. I saw you react to someone else commenting on your emotional states, the affront. I point this out and then suggest that your project is ill-served by having emotional states and ad hom and reading others and comparing yourself to others present in a discussion.

Yeah, this may well be closer to the "objective truth" than my own assesment of my own motivation and intentions here.

And the fact that it does not resonate at all with me, might be just more proof that the problem here is me. Now, let's find someone who can demonstrate it one way or the other once and for all.

Again, an issue like abortion. Discuss the "goal of understanding" the "specific values and goals" embedded in this particularly ferocious conflicting good...as an epistemologist might. What would she be telling those folks outside the abortion clinic who are hurling insults and spit -- and bullets? -- at each other?

Karpel Tunnel wrote: YOu fucking cunt.

She would ask people on both sides how they know they are right. Just like you do. The problem is you want the psychoanalyze, you want to parade your hole, you want to compare your personalities...

And, then, presto, just like that, the insults and the spit and the occsional bullets, would all be subsumed in a cool, calm and collected discussion of what these folks can really demonstrate [intellectually] that they know regarding the most rational manner in which to recocile the conflicting goods here?

And yet you can't even eschew an emotional outburst in discussing it with me here and now.

Karpel Tunnel wrote: What an utterly irrelevent question or challenge this was. It was as if I said an academic epistemologist would solve the problem. Lunacy. I have made it clear I don't think there is objective good. I gave a fairly simple practical suggestion about what is making your threads more muddy and off topic. That's it.

Either philosophers take what they think they can know about human morality "technically" out into the world of, at time, fierce human interaction, or [from my frame of mind] they become just one or another rendition of Will Durant's own conjecture regarding the "epistemologists":

"In the end it is dishonesty that breeds the sterile intellectualism of contemporary speculation. A man who is not certain of his mental integrity shuns the vital problems of human existence; at any moment the great laboratory of life may explode his little lie and leave him naked and shivering in the face of truth. So he builds himself an ivory tower of esoteric tomes and professionally philosophical periodicals; he is comfortable only in their company...he wanders farther and farther away from his time and place, and from the problems that absorb his people and his century. The vast concerns that properly belong to philosophy do not concern him...He retreats into a little corner, and insulates himself from the world under layer and layer of technical terminology. He ceases to be a philosopher, and becomes an epistemologist."

I'll stop here. The rest is just you tumbling head over heels into a scathing rant about me. Huffing and puffing because I refuse to yank the exchange up into the vicinity of the "general descriptions" you seem [to me] more clearly comfortable with.

He was like a man who wanted to change all; and could not; so burned with his impotence; and had only me, an infinitely small microcosm to convert or detest. John Fowles

In our discussion of Communism, was I basically spitting in your face? Or, instead, was I suggesting that any particular inidvidual's reaction to it is likely to be embodied in dasein, conflicting goods and political economy?

YOU tell me. Apparently only YOUR thoughts, YOUR feelings and YOUR reactions have any reality for YOU. If I tell YOU how I saw it and what I thought about it, then YOU will just react with YOUR interpretation of what I say. YOU have YOUR own truth about it which is independent of what I think or feel. I need not respond to these questions.

In our discussion of Communism, was I basically spitting in your face? Or, instead, was I suggesting that any particular inidvidual's reaction to it is likely to be embodied in dasein, conflicting goods and political economy?

YOU tell me. Apparently only YOUR thoughts, YOUR feelings and YOUR reactions have any reality for YOU. If I tell YOU how I saw it and what I thought about it, then YOU will just react with YOUR interpretation of what I say. YOU have YOUR own truth about it which is independent of what I think or feel. I need not respond to these questions.

No, I was not even remotely spitting in your face. Though both of us seem ready, willing and able [at times] to be provocative, testy and querlous in our exchanges.

As for my own thoughts, feelings and reactions about/toward Communism, I root them in "I" as an existential contraption. I was once a proponent of Communism. Then as a result of "new experiences, new relationships, and access to new ideas" I abandoned that commitment.

Does this then mean that now I am more in touch with the "real me"? Does this mean that others who still champion one or another rendition of Marxism/socialism/Communism ought to aboandon these things as well?

How on earth would I/could I go about demonstrating that? Here I am just like you: taking an existential leap to a particular set of political prejudices rooted more in the subjective/subjunctive "I" than in anything philosophers, ethicists and/or political scientists are able to encompass in an argument said to be the obligation of all rational men and women.

The difference being that my leap "here and now" has landed me in the hole I am in. Whereas your leap still affords you some measure of conviction. Your take on Communism is thought by you to be, what, neccessarily more reasonable than those who oppose you?

My whole point revolves around the extent to which individual reactions to things like Communism either are or are not basically just existential contraptions. And, thus, our "interpretations" would be in turn.

And out in the real world, responding or not responding to another's view on Communism depends on the particular context that you find yourself in. If the liberals and Democrats go further left in America and become more and more willing to use the "S" word, how far will that be for some from the "C" word?

The power might shift to the left and proponents of capitalism may be confronted with actual substantive arguments revolving around, say, actual legislation.

Or, sure, the power might shift to the "F" word. Then we'll have "national socialism". And you can bet those folks will be full-blown objectivists.

He was like a man who wanted to change all; and could not; so burned with his impotence; and had only me, an infinitely small microcosm to convert or detest. John Fowles

Does this then mean that now I am more in touch with the "real me"? Does this mean that others who still champion one or another rendition of Marxism/socialism/Communism ought to aboandon these things as well?

How on earth would I/could I go about demonstrating that? Here I am just like you: taking an existential leap to a particular set of political prejudices rooted more in the subjective/subjunctive "I" than in anything philosophers, ethicists and/or political scientists are able to encompass in an argument said to be the obligation of all rational men and women.

One can demonstrate that the secret police existed/exists, that people disappeared during the night, that the camps existed/exist and that the bodies were disposed of.

Those are demonstrable truths.

I make a personal evaluation that those sort of things are not acceptable. It's my personal line in the sand.

Sure, someone else does find it acceptable.

But you make it sound as if I'm making up truths and that I intentionally deny the truths presented to me by other people. I don't think I do that.

The difference being that my leap "here and now" has landed me in the hole I am in. Whereas your leap still affords you some measure of conviction.

Yeah, I'm still convinced that there is truth "out there" that can be used to make decisions.

It's definitely not this :

Your truth in other words.

I don't have "my own truth". I have beliefs based on truths and also some beliefs based on falsehoods (which I mistakenly think are truths). When I discover that something that I thought was true is actually false, then I adjust my beliefs. I try to minimize my errors. It try to avoid errors. I fix my mistakes.

Does this then mean that now I am more in touch with the "real me"? Does this mean that others who still champion one or another rendition of Marxism/socialism/Communism ought to aboandon these things as well?

How on earth would I/could I go about demonstrating that? Here I am just like you: taking an existential leap to a particular set of political prejudices rooted more in the subjective/subjunctive "I" than in anything philosophers, ethicists and/or political scientists are able to encompass in an argument said to be the obligation of all rational men and women.

One can demonstrate that the secret police existed/exists, that people disappeared during the night, that the camps existed/exist and that the bodies were disposed of.

Those are demonstrable truths.

Yes, but then we are back to the political prejudices -- assumptions -- embraced by those on both sides of the divide.

Some Communists will argue that these policies were necessary [historically] because the capitalist juggernaut around the globe was hell bent on destroying the Soviet system by whatever means necessary. So, by whatever means necessary, the Communists were forced to defend themselves.

Others will note that in nations like Russia and China the revolutions did not unfold in accordance with the official Marxist trajectory.

Still others will argue that next time the revolution will be done right.

And any revolution will beget these terrible things. Just ask the folks defending the Kings and Queens at a time when the capitalists were just beginning to lay the groundwork for what would become the horrors embedded in the Industial Revolution.

And then [of course] there are all the terrible tales [and practices] that the Communists can disclose to us about the capitalist political economy.

Let's call them, say, conflicting goods.

phyllo wrote: I make a personal evaluation that those sort of things are not acceptable. It's my personal line in the sand.

But that's my point. That's the part where I suggest that your own particular "I" here is largely just an existential contraption embedded in dasein. You just don't happen to react to this in the manner in which "I" do. You are considerably less "fractured and fragmented". You are considerably more convinced that your take on Communism is much, much closer to whatever all rational men and women will be obligated to think about it if, one day, philosophers and ethicists and political scientists actually do pin this all down.

The day you'll be able to say, "see, I told you", and I will be left with no other viable option but to agree with that. The objective proof will actually be there!

phyllo wrote: But you make it sound as if I'm making up truths and that I intentionally deny the truths presented to me by other people. I don't think I do that.

Okay, and if folks come into this exchange who still defend Communism, they will no doubt say the same thing about themselves in regard to the points they raise about capitalism.

But my frame of mind revolves around the assumption that individual motivations and intentions are embedded in the enormous gap between what "I" think I know about myself here and now and all that actually could be known about myself if I had access to all of the variables that went into creating "me" from the cradle to, well, "here and now".

Again, it all depends on the extent to which one is able to convince oneself that "I" am in sync with the "real me" in sync with "the right thing to do".

And then acknowledging that the closer one comes to believing this, the more likely they are able to attain and then sustain the sort of "comfort and consolation" that human psychological defense mechanisms were designed [by nature] to help us endure what can be a profoundly precarious and problematic life.

The difference being that my leap "here and now" has landed me in the hole I am in. Whereas your leap still affords you some measure of conviction.

phyllo wrote: Yeah, I'm still convinced that there is truth "out there" that can be used to make decisions.

There you go. This works for you. And since what you think you know is true here is what motivates your behaviors, you can choose to go after the Communists in much the same manner that they choose to go after the capitalists.

That's just no longer an option for me anymore. My own "I" here is considerably more fractured and fragmented.

So, wouldn't I want to be more like you then? Wouldn't anyone?

On this side of the grave. And then all I imagine waits for "me" on the other side is nothing at all.

phyllo wrote: It's definitely not this :

Your truth in other words.

I don't have "my own truth". I have beliefs based on truths and also some beliefs based on falsehoods (which I mistakenly think are truths). When I discover that something that I thought was true is actually false, then I adjust my beliefs. I try to minimize my errors. It try to avoid errors. I fix my mistakes.

You seem to have lost that.

Yeah, keep telling yourself that. Because, again, all you need do is to believe it.

What's important though [to me] is how "general" this assessment is. Somewhere "out there" is the whole truth about Communism. Maybe invested in one or another God. Maybe invested in one or another Humanist narrative. Maybe invested in what science can tell us. And that has implications for this side of the grave and for the other side of it.

And as far as your own particular "I" is concerned here and now, you have struck just the right balance so as to sustain just enough of the "real me" in sync with "the right thing to do" to take solace in just enough "comfort and consolation" to keep you up out of that hole that "I" am in.

Bottom line: It looks like you are [still] the clear winner to me.

Last edited by iambiguous on Sun Aug 19, 2018 9:15 pm, edited 1 time in total.

He was like a man who wanted to change all; and could not; so burned with his impotence; and had only me, an infinitely small microcosm to convert or detest. John Fowles

Some Communists will argue that these policies were necessary [historically] because the capitalist juggernaut around the globe was hell bent on destroying the Soviet system by whatever means necessary. So, by whatever means necessary, the Communists were forced to defend themselves.

Then one goes on to examine how much of a threat was posed by the "capitalist juggernaut" and whether the response was appropriate. Kind of like determining whether it's appropriate to swap a fly with a sledgehammer.

You act as if any response is reasonable.

Still others will argue that next time the revolution will be done right.

Sure. Do the same things but get a different result next time.

Others will note that in nations like Russia and China the revolutions did not unfold in accordance with the official Marxist trajectory.

Not surprising since Marx made up all the stuff. You know "in his head". It sounds wonderful and I understand why people embrace it. But...

The actual trajectory shows how quickly and easily the theory falls apart and the society becomes a totalitarian nightmare.

And any revolution will beget these terrible things.

Oh really? You can't have a significant change without the horrors and the terrors?

Sounds like your giving carte blanche to the revolutionaries. "Do whatever you want and you won't be held accountable".

And then [of course] there are all the terrible tales [and practices] that the Communists can disclose to us about the capitalist political economy.

This sounds like just bringing up the evils of capitalism makes the evils of communism "go away".

Okay, you have "terrible tales and practices" in both systems ... now compare the level and extent of those terrible practices.